#but it is making me think about all my favourite parts of critrole

[seeminglyseph]

I did not bring Wyll to the burning building because I am playing the game mostly blind. so it is kinda funny in my head to be like.

"I thought we refused looking for the Duke?"

"We refused when some random noble lady asked and I figured like. 'Why the fuck are you asking me? I just showed up here, you don't even know who I am. I don't know who *you* are. Fuck off. If I don't commit, I don't get in trouble if I don't figure it out.' But then I found out it was Wyll's dad. And I like Wyll, and so I'm willing to put in effort to go find Wyll's dad. The difference is who asks for help, honestly."

which is a conversation Astarion and Lake had for literally no reason, but that I can't help but have little scenarios in my head. In this scenario Astarion learns that Lake is basically Chaotic Neutral. "May save your life, may steal your car." This may canonically not work for someone who is supposed to be a Selûnite Cleric but like. fuckin'. whatever. It was a fun goddess to be a cleric of and I admit I did not do a lot of research into her alignment and I suck at alignments and almost always play some form of Neutral. That's My Ninja Way, Bitch.

I should probably spend some time on the Forgotten Realms Wiki to figure out the lore I don't know for a bit. I am a fake DnD fan who knows more about Tal'Dorei than Faerûn. fuckin' oops. I'm sorry to everyone who knows me for every time I make a critrole reference especially since I care way more about the Mighty Nein than Vox Machina and Bell's Hells. which makes me like. The least relatable fan right now. Campaign 2 was my introduction to DnD and that's gonna hurt a lot of people's brain's and I'm real sorry 'bout that. One day they're animated series is gonna come out and it'll be easier to explain that. It was really good but there's just too much content to expect anyone right now to actually go watch and understand it...

[burningdarkfire]

A (or if you have favorite parts from ur fics you want to talk abt, that works too), E, K, N, U? :]

hiii thanks for the ask! 🥰

(send me a fanfic writer ask!)

A: Of the fanfic you’ve written, which is your favorite and why?

nearly impossible to pick an absolute favourite, but i haven't given into the desert a shoutout in a while! it's a damn interesting fic that did double duty, exploring both what i found interesting about critrole characters and in the AMCE world. i value the work i put into it as the first drafts went nowhere but i didn't give up. and of course i'm incredibly glad for all the people who read it and reached out and all the friends i've made because of it!

E: What character do you identify with most? Is there a certain fic of yours that captures these qualities particularly well?

all of my dnd characters can be described as "guy (gender neutral) who really, really believes in something but it turns out that the path to evil is lined with steadfast faith -> guy (gender neutral) who then realizes he has to make his own meaning in life" anyway can you believe i really liked caleb widogast?

funnily enough i don't have a fic that's particularly about that because the entire canon was about that and certainly LOB did not waver. if you want to see some of my qualities blatantly self-inserted into a character you can read any of my fics that feature astrid beck 😂

K: Do you have a guilty pleasures in fic (reading or writing)?

i mean, let's be honest. a/b/o is probably the last bastion to any idea of a "guilty pleasure" and since i've warmed to that in the past few years, i've also shed any illusion of "guilty pleasures". i have shameless pleasures now!

but also i write a lot of jokes only because i find them funny. i truly have no idea if other people enjoy the humour in my fics but i find myself hilarious so i keep doing it

N: Any fic ideas brewing that you’d care to share?

god, too many these days! i'm really itching to write more in canonverse now that i've spent so long writing mostly AUs. i have a doc that just has a bunch of fic ideas and this is the latest entry: "there's definitely something about caleb seeing astrid casting either modify memory or feeblemind for the first time—might be good as an outsider POV, maybe beau?"

U: Is there a pairing you would like to write, but haven’t tried yet?

i actually think about it constantly that capi wrote the first astrid/essek/caleb fic and how it's still the only astrid/essek/caleb fic because like. who am i. that should be me

[loveislarryislove]

Halfway Home Check-in (2023)

I know this is over a month late because of who I am as a person but I still want to do it so shhhhh, a #HashtagGoals update for the year. I started this in June/July but wanted to make some “quick” progress on a few things first -- but then I was not quick oops. 

Numeric goals

Minimum goal: 5 fics and 50,000 words over the year

Aim goal: 12 fics (ideally at least 1 per month) and 80,000 words over the year

Ludicrous goal: 15 fics and 100,000 words over the year 

So far this year, I’ve posted 6 fics totaling about 35k, and I also have around 10k written on another three ongoing projects (edit: those numbers are from July 1st aka actually halfway through the year; now it’s more like 20k on four projects), so I’m definitely going to be fine on the minimum goal. I also have a couple of other fests I’m eyeing or ideas I might do -- and Wordplay is coming up, so that should also help boost the number of fics. I think in terms of number of fics, the Aim goal is totally doable and the Ludicrous goal is definitely plausible. It’s harder to predict word count-wise, since a lot of these upcoming fics are likely to be short, but we’ll see! 

15,000 lifetime kudos

222,222 lifetime hits

1,000 kudos on 2023 fics

10,000 hits on 2023 fics

ngl I don’t remember the numbers at the start of the year, so it’s hard for me to say exactly where I am on the lifetime goals, but they definitely seem in reach! I’m probably around halfway on most of these, which for halfway through the year is great -- and since Wordplay again is a huge boost, we should be good in the hood!

General goals

Tracking my writing

I’ve been doing this, and I love the graphs so much. Look how tasty!!!

I also was inspired by @larry-hiatus​ to make a spreadsheet of all my fics (77 and counting, it took a while haha) with various stats, and the graphs from that were also interesting! Apparently I write Louis POV twice as often as Harry, I switched hard from past tense to present tense in 2017, and I only have 10 fics with more than a few seconds of smut (8 of those written in the last two years). 

Beta-reading more

I’d say I’ve been medium at this. I’ve done some, and I’ve also recently signed up for a couple events as a beta! And I do some editing stuff for work purposes so I guess that could arguably count.

Reading-reading more (both fic and non-fic)

I regret to say that I have forgotten how to read and I literally don’t think I’ve read a book all year oops. Have devoured some fic though. Maybe I’ll read some books when I go on vacation next week. 

Branching out with what I write to explore new fandoms or fandoms I haven’t written for as much, or new pairings within familiar fandoms

The 6 fics so far are evenly split between three fandoms, though all fandoms I’ve written before. I may dabble around for Troped multifandom events, I signed up as a beta for a PJO event, and I’m trying to find a Shiall concept I like for The Show Fic Fest, so definitely still room to keep exploring and diversifying.

Replying to most comments – “all” isn’t always feasible for me, but I’ve been doing probably around 80% and I think that’s a decent proportion

It looks like I’m at around 60% so far this year, so I guess that means it’s time to go on a spree! (edit: those were July numbers again; now I’m at more like 75% which I’m pretty happy with!)

Make a podfic

Make a fic rec of some of my favourite fics

Make a cover for one (or more than one) of my old fics

I have done... none of these. Maybe someday lmao

Find the executive functioning to put my Wordplay and Troped fics into series

Come up and implement a generic AO3 pseud for my non-Larry non-critrole fics and sort those around

I did both of these this week! The pseud part was actually embarrassingly easy, you can mass-edit what pseud something is under so it took like two minutes. The series part was more effort but it’s done now :) I was procrastinating making this post until then and I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing haha

Come up with and implement sort of Replying To Old Comments Project so I feel like less of a doof replying to comments from like… five years ago

Still want to, still haven’t.

See you in five months for final results!

[thessalian]

Thess vs Cronyism

I forgot about my least favourite part of the medical community: cronyism.

On Thursday, I had a meeting with the office manager in the Gastro department at the hospital I was working in the Chest Unit at for three weeks. She adored me, the job was perfect, and while they were seeing some other people, I was pretty confident.

Turns out I should have been. My contact at the agency was away on Friday, but spent Monday chasing down the reply that should have been forthcoming on Friday. Called this morning saying, “[Office Manager] adored you and admitted that you would be perfect for the job ... but the consultant had worked with this other person someplace else and insisted that they go with this other person”.

Perspective time: if this was a PA role, I wouldn’t care. However, this role is basically proofreading letters that came through voice recognition software (like the helljob in radiology from a few years ago, just with less insane workload). It is a role specifically to let actual PAs get on with handling the consultants’ activities instead of handling letters. The consultants do not have much contact with those particular admins.

Yet because this consultant knew this other individual, he apparently didn’t even want to hear that I was the right person for the job.

All is not lost. There are a couple of other departments in that hospital that need help and are looking at my CV with interest. The issue is that this particular hospital is having to tighten the purse strings quite a lot at the moment and while they all desperately need me, they need to put together a very strong case to justify hiring me. My CV has also gone out to other hospitals. I think Agency Guy feels really bad that he had to call me up this morning and tell me that I lost a job that I was perfect for and that even the office manager wanted me in because a consultant wanted someone familiar.

Anyway, all is not lost. I still have paycheque coming, there will actually be a small amount of cash incoming from my book (yeah, it’s only going to be, like, pocket change, but you’d be amazed at how far I can make pocket change stretch in an emergency) and with luck, I’ll have some more perfume orders. Plus I have time to ponder Yasha, and some other CritRole NPCs.

...I also kinda want to do the Cupcake Coterie but I’m not sure how that would be taken.